Shopify Editions Summer 2023: Everything You Need to Know

[ARCHIVE: Historical recap of Shopify Summer 2023 Editions. All features are now standard Shopify functionality.]

Originally published on LinkedIn, August 2023.

Shopify Editions Summer 2023: Everything you need to know

Unless you're living under a metaphorical Ecommerce rock, you must have heard about Shopify's latest Editions where they boasted more than 100 updates and new functionalities (I even teased you about it on my weekly newsletter ).

If you want to explore them by yourself, you can now check the cool landing page Shopify created for all of us:

If you don't want to spend the next 2 hours going through it, just read this short presentation about the most important releases and why you should care about them. In order to make it even simpler, I split the news into categories, so you can quickly scroll down and find what you're interested in:

The Age of AI

B2B is cool again

For the Pro Users

The Best Checkout in the World

Shopify Native Apps

Themes & Customisation

Admin on Steroids

Better Logistics

Marketing Tools

Shopify Fintech

For Nerds... ahem... I mean, Developers

The Age of AI We believe entrepreneurs are heroes. And every hero needs a sidekick. -- Shopify CEO, Tobias Lütke

Sidekick is arriving now in the beginning of August. If you want early access, you can submit this form . This new AI-powered solution will enable you to do everything on Shopify faster, by directly speaking with a chatGPT-like bot. Some examples of what you can do with it:

Create discounts and sales across your store

Customise and add more content to your theme

Analyse your store's data and analytics to answer any questions you have about your business

Provide support to your needs, based on all Shopify help center and documentation

On top of this awesome solution, we must mention the overall AI initiative named Shopify Magic , which Sidekick is a part of. Even if it has been announced and released for some time already, you should be aware of its great capabilities:

Create long-form content

Generate copy directly into the online store

Shopify Email at a new level with AI-generated email subject lines, body copy, and optimised sending times, On top of it there are new custom email templates and high-volume pricing.

AI-generated FAQs & search: Shopify Inbox just got much more advanced.

How much time do you spend reading app reviews? Now you can make an informed app choice with much less effort thanks to the app reviews summary by AI. AI-powered review summary for the Translate & Adapt App

B2B is cool again

Shopify's investing A LOT on their B2B capabilities. Thank the Ecommerce gods for that! We see more and more retailers interested in simple to use solutions that just work for both DTC and B2B. Here are some of the most valuable new features:

Credit card vaulting (only available when using Shopify Payments)

Volume discounts (in early access mode)

Company account requests (in early access mode)

Quick orders lists

Shopify Flow B2B automations

Paypal payments

B2B Migration Kit from the old Wholesale channel to the new B2B solution

If before you needed a lot of custom development or a third-party app to manage your wholesale business, you can think about that twice now that Shopify's B2B is improving drastically. Note that all these functionalities are exclusive to Shopify Plus.

For the Pro Users

If you're playing in the major leagues, you'll care very much about these updates. Maybe you're not quite ready for Shopify Plus yet, but you're using the Advanced plan to the maximum of its abilities. You have done a lot of custom work to tailor the user experience and internal processes to your needs. Now you can relax even more, since Shopify's Admin API doubled its rate limit for the Shopify Advanced tarif.

Now that you can keep your backend code running smoothly, you can wish for something extra to make your life easier: what if the Shopify administration was completely flexible to my specific needs? That's possible now (soon - early access) with the Admin UI Extensions . You'll be able to embed apps directly into your store dashboards and interact with them without ever needing to leave your control center. Not only this is an opportunity for app developers, but also for big businesses that are able to build custom apps to serve their personalisation needs.

On top of all these pro-functionalities, don't you think Shopify has neglected its POS . A bunch of new functionalities are coming in:

Unified Inventory Management

Product Details Page Improvements

Retail Workflows Optimisation

New POS UI extensions to customise your POS

Sales attribution

Increased POS PIN combinations

The Best Checkout in the World

Shopify has been proudly announcing for some time that they have indeed the best converting checkout in the world : Not building on Shopify is now a competitive liability. -- Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein

We even spoke about it one of the latest AMAs with Harvey on Twitter Spaces:

Since the checkout is the Shopify crown jewel, it's natural that some of the most impactful progress and updates have been done in this area. There are 3 main categories of improvements done: Customisation, Conversion and Functionality . Note that most of these are available only for Shopify Plus.

I. Customisation

Checkout extensions: Upsell subscriptions and pre-orders

Customised delivery methods

Custom fonts

Local pick ups available on draft orders

II. Conversion

One-page checkout

More payment options

Shop Pay available on non-Shopify checkouts for enterprise clients

Shop pay increases conversion by 50%

Shop pay Installments (only for some businesses in the US)

III. Functionality

Address validation

Cart and Checkout Validation Function API

Cart Transform Function

Shopify Native Apps

More apps made by Shopify mean a couple of things: more merchants can get access to new functionalities without paying for an extra app; app developers need to step up their game to stay relevant; and new possibilities open to everyone in the ecosystem. Let's go through the most important news:

New Subscriptions App ( sign up for early access )

New Bundles App

Shopify Collective : like drop-shipping but directly from other Shopify brands.

Shopify Marketplace Connect

Improved Shopify Forms

The Shopify Search & Discovery app now supports renaming filters , translating filters , and grouping filter values .

Shopify Flow is now available on all plans (from Basic)

Themes & Customisation

There hasn't been such a huge revolution since the update to the Online Store 2.0. Now that we have sections everywhere and can customise stores with much less coding than in the past, Shopify surprised us with another jump in the same direction. In the past, some would consider Wix and Squarespace to have a competitive advantage over Shopify's design tooling, but that ends completely now:

Easy Drag & Drop with Flex sections ( sign up for preview later this year )

Change Color Schemes with one click

Theme header customizations that drive conversion

Built-in animations on Shopify's free themes

Store Contexts for different content per market and on B2B vs DTC -

Even faster stores !

Admin on Steroids

Your store dashboard is much more than just a pretty face. Even though there is a new beautiful UI , Shopify launched a bunch of new functionalities too:

Benchmarks that help you make better data-driven decisions

Centralised Organisation of your Shopify Plus Stores

Custom landing pages through metaobjects

More discount combinations

Support for 250 variants coming soon (instead of the current 100)

Filter products in the admin with metafields

Improved language offered by the customer support: currently English, French, Spanish and German, with more coming soon.

Better Logistics

Running an Ecommerce business is not only about having a fancy-looking store with cool products. A huge part of it is managing inventory, shipping products and handling returns. Shopify's also not just a website builder. It's a full-fledged solution to help your online store thrive as a whole. They 100% showed they know this and they care for your brand, with all the improvements added on the logistics front:

Fulfil orders faster with Shopify Shipping (available in the US, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Italy and Spain)

Manage inventory with Purchase Orders

Split orders for fulfilling

Smart Order Routing leads to increased efficiency

Self-serve returns

Marketing Tools

Since the cost of customer acquisition started to exponential raise (also driven by new privacy policies which make much harder to target the right audience), Shopify has been thinking outside the box, to make it easier for you to reach your future customers. How do they do it? Take a look:

Shopify Audiences 2.0 to cut acquisition costs by 50% (available to Shopify Plus stores in the US or Canada using Shopify Payments)

Tiktok shop ( sign up for early access )

Shop app channel customisations

Shop Cash offers are now available in early access to most businesses in the US.

Shop Minis

New customer segmentation filters

More automations across Shopify native marketing apps

Shopify's Fintech

Even though Shopify isn't in the banking business, they are for sure in the business of empowering entrepreneurs. That's why they can't stand watching any venture crumble for lack of opportunity. You may have heard already about Shopify Capital , which helps funding Ecommerce start-ups. Shopify is committed to give you all the tools you need to move forward, so they keep delivering more good news:

Shopify Credit is the new credit card you can use to empower your business (available to select businesses in the US)

If your business offers CBD, tobacco, sexual wellness, or pharmaceutical products, you may now be eligible for Shopify Payments ( waitlist here )

For Nerds... ahem... I mean, Developers

There's simply too much to be excited about here. If you want to hear the first reaction to these updates from a Shopify developer, go check out the Twitter Spaces organised by Youness Idbakkasse :

Nerd highlights:

Build headless faster with Hydrogen and Oxygen

Customer Account API available for headless builds

Limitless Storefront API with support for predictive search and faceted filters

Liquid rendering pipeline being rebuilt for even faster outputs

More and more Shopify Functions for great customisation and extensibility

Create Shopify apps with a Remix app template

Extension only-apps

4x faster metafields

Conclusion

Ages ago (it feels like that), when I thought about writing this in-dept article on all Shopify Editions updates, I was convinced I'd be able to cover everything. Uff, how naive I was (am). I presented you the coolest stuff from my perspective, and for some reason I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of what all these releases actually mean for the whole Ecommerce ecosystem.

The key takeaway from another Shopify Editions is simple: Nobody can compete with Shopify's level of innovation in the Commerce Business. You can damn quote me on that, if you like! That's why I keep recommending for big and small businesses alike to jump boat and migrate to Shopify, unless they want to keep investing tons of money to keep staying behind the curve.

If you don't want that, it's simple. Start your store today ! Or even book a free call with me and I'll be happy to discuss your needs.